AFTER 33 hours travelling from Scotland via England, Japan and
Cairns - and 20 years after the futures of their two daughters had
been stolen by a serial rapist in priest's clothing - Anthony and
Christina Foster landed in Sydney yesterday morning.

They were here on a mission for their late daughter, Emma.

Their faith in God had disappeared, Mr Foster said, since they
learnt a five-year-old Emma was repeatedly raped at a Melbourne
Catholic primary school by a serial abuser of 50 years named Father
Kevin O'Donnell.

They later learnt her sister, Katie, had been raped by the same
priest at the same school.

They cut short a European holiday when they realised that Emma,
who committed suicide in January, aged 26, would have wanted them
here this week.

Now they wait in a Sydney hotel, seeking that rare indulgence -
an audience with the Pope.

They would tell him that the church should sell property if it
must to take lifelong care of its victims, or lose its moral
authority in the greater community.

"The church just doesn't get it," Mr Foster said. "It just does
not comprehend the impact of its actions and the effect of sexual
assault. And it does not know how to look after the victims."

Only the Pope, he said, could unite the Australian church in a
uniform response that is "moral, not legal" and end the
buck-passing between orders and archdioceses that has denied
justice and peace to many victims.

The Fosters learnt the awful truth when Emma reached puberty and
the changes in her body induced flashbacks to what happened over
and over in an Oakleigh church hall, in the south-east of
Melbourne, from the ages of five to eight.

For her death, by an overdose of medication, they hold the
Catholic Church responsible - not only O'Donnell but the religious
hierarchy they say could have prevented it.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, offered Emma
$50,000 in compensation and continuing counselling after the family
approached the church's Towards Healing program in the late 1990s,
when Cardinal Pell was the archbishop of Melbourne. On Wednesday he
described Emma's case as tragic and said his apology still stood.
He had left Melbourne when the civil case was under way and had no
involvement in the case.

Yesterday Mr Foster said the Victorian system created by
Cardinal Pell, which, unlike in other states, caps payouts at
$50,000, was "unjust and unfair".

An independent panel should be formed to review all cases
handled by the Melbourne archdiocese since 2001 and increase their
payments to the level of a civil claim, he said.

Mr Foster said he had shown Cardinal Pell a photograph of the
cardinal with Emma in the Oakleigh parish when she was a girl, and
one of Emma after she had harmed herself as a teenager. When
Cardinal Pell was shown the second photograph in a 60
Minutes interview in June 2002, he said he did not recall
having seen it before.

The Fosters see themselves as spokespeople for hundreds of
victims who, because of the devastating impact of sexual abuse, are
less able to argue their case.

Indications from the Vatican press office that there may not be
a spoken papal apology this week showed the church was ducking for
cover, Mr Foster said.

He questioned the fitness for the job of the World Youth Day
co-ordinator, Bishop Anthony Fisher, after his comments that some
people were "dwelling crankily on old wounds".

It was "disgusting, given that our daughter only died six months
ago", Mr Foster said.

But the chief operating officer for World Youth Day, Danny
Casey, said Bishop Fisher's comments had been directed to the
media, not victims themselves. "It shouldn't in any way suggest
he's a man lacking compassion," Mr Casey said. "I know he is a man
who feels deeply a great degree of compassion for the victims of
abuse and indeed all those who have been hurt."

In 1995, O'Donnell was sentenced to 39 months' jail for
indecently assaulting 12 victims in the 1970s. He died in 1997.

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